Francisco Giles reveals the 200 unfurnished apartments in his complex will be called Park Residences by Rotana. Francisco Giles reveals the 200 unfurnished apartments in his complex will be called Park Residences by Rotana.

Is it a similar business mix at Arjaan in Dubai?
Chantel Moore: We’ve seen a shift from long-term business more into hotel business in the last year due to the high demand in Dubai and being very closely located to the World Trade Centre and exhibitions.

We do still have some long stay guests in house and we have the highest repeat guests in the company. Our hotel is running at 93% year to date, and as an apartment style hotel that’s quite interesting.

How are the other properties performing?
JÖrg A Hauri: Year to date, we are higher than last year, which means we are at 82% occupancy. Our mix is slightly different — we have the apartments for long stay but that as well has come down. We had about 80% annual contracts two years ago; today it’s only about 35% annual contracts and the rest is between three and six months, so that has changed.

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In the main hotel, we have increased in the FIT market and expect by end of this year, 30% of our occupancy will be related to the leisure market, so quite a shift compared to the 8% it was earlier.

[This is attributed to a] different focus and new locations, new hotels have taken a certain percentage of the business as well. And the interesting part is, our 11 F&B outlets managed to increase revenues and increase customers in the last two years. Again, when you consider that we have 65-70 new restaurants in Abu Dhabi, it’s a pretty strong performance.

Francisco: From a hotel point of view, year to date, till the end of June, occupancy was 60% in the hotel, and 95.7% in the Arjaan, so the overall complex was 72%. In the Arjaan, we have 65-70% long stay guests, and one or two big contracts and obviously we want to get more and more long stay, because the yield on the rates is higher.

Rabih: At the Media Rotana, for the last two years we have witnessed positive growth of almost 22% in RevPAR. And so far this year we are sitting at 19% over last year, year to date RevPAR as well. The occupancy grew from 72% from 2012; we are touching the mid 80s so that’s an excellent thing for us.

chantel: The real estate sector has started to boom again which has helped the Arjaan properties; there’s a higher demand now for apartments, and you can see in the papers everyday that rents have increased dramatically. So that’s had a huge impact on people requesting long stay.

JÖrg: It’s different in Abu Dhabi. We have an oversupply of real estate and the prices came down over the last two years and that’s the reason our property has lost with the suites apartment, the long stay customer. So it’s a reverse here from Dubai.

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